Free The House Girl by Tara Conklin Page A

a remark that, generally, went unacknowledged by Dresser and Dan; even Dresser’s note-taking assistant seemed oblivious to their presence. Sometimes Lina exchanged looks with Garrison, both of them in postures of interested silence and mutual understanding that their role now was this: to be present, to bear witness to the interesting and intellectually stimulating exchange between these two successful men, to absorb as if by osmosis their intelligence, experience, and wit (Dan cracked a few jokes).
    Toward the end of the meeting, as Dresser was playing with some compound interest rate calculations, Dan asked a question.
    “And why now?” Dan said, his tone neutral. “I’m not talking about statutory limits. I’m talking historically, generations after the slavery … situation ended. Why now?”
    “Why now ?” Dresser repeated and raised his gaze to a small window high on the east-facing wall that showed only a pale blue square of sky. He turned back to Dan. “Let me ask you something. American slaves built the White House, they built the Capitol building. Jefferson owned them, Washington owned them, Ulysses S. Grant—yes, the great commander of Union troops— he owned slaves. Eight presidents sitting in the White House owned African American people. And yet there is not one single national monument to our brothers and sisters in chains. Why is it that we have nineteen Smithsonian museums—nineteen, one just for goddamn postage stamps—and not one is dedicated to memorializing those people who lived in bondage and helped build this country? We would not be the world’s superpower today if we had not had two hundred and fifty years of free, limitless labor on which to build our economy. Why now, you ask? What were their names, Dan? They were our founding fathers and mothers just as much as the bewigged white men who laid the whip against their backs. Isn’t it time this country made the effort to remember them? And to calculate how much we owe them? It is past time, my friend.”
    Dresser eyed Dan steadily with, it seemed to Lina, a great dislike. Then Dresser smiled, and his teeth were very white and even as the edge of a straight razor. “I get riled up talking about all this, Dan, but no offense is intended. I know we’re on the same team here. In my own family, we have a few names, a few details. As a child, my paternal grandfather was enslaved on a Mississippi cotton plantation, that we know. My maternal great-grandmother was taken away from her children, taken and sold off. What happened to that woman? To my great-grandfather? That history sits ill with me. It sits very ill indeed.”
    The room vibrated with an uncomfortable silence. The bare emotion of Dresser’s voice, the earnestness, seemed to have cowed Dan and Garrison, and they each sat now with bowed heads, studying their hands with fierce concentration. Only Lina kept her eyes on Dresser. She felt a flush of possible understanding, an affinity with him having to do with her own mother’s lost family and the nebulous desire to know. She wondered what else Dresser had learned about his history, the grandmother sold, the motherless children, and how he had achieved such success—Look at him! The watch! The assistant!—despite this constant, roaming absence. Despite a present identity perforated with giant person-shaped holes. She felt an urge, one she promptly suppressed, to grab hold of Dresser’s hand.
    Dan raised his gaze. “Thanks for that, Ron. I’m sure we all appreciate the history lesson.” He turned his attention toward Lina and Garrison, and his hands came up, elbows on table. “Now, let’s study the briefs that have been submitted in the other slavery reparations cases and the decisions that were handed down. Garrison, I want you to outline the primary reasons plaintiffs have lost before on summary judgment, and our arguments to get around these issues. Standing and statute of limitations are the big ones. I have confidence